Secretary of state John Kerry urges Iraq’s new leaders to work quickly to form an inclusive government and says the US is prepared to offer significant help to stabilise a new Iraqi government. Speaking at a press conference in Sydney he said: ‘We are prepared to consider additional political, economic and security options as Iraq starts to build a new government’

We’re going to wrap up our live blog coverage for the day. Here’s a summary of where things stand:

Public support crumbled for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday as the government of Iran and multiple Iraqi Shia militias announced their support for prime minister-designate Haider al-Abadi, who also won a pledge of support from the Iraqi Kurds.

The timeline and mechanism of Maliki’s exit – and whether he would go easily – were unclear. He did not make a public statement on Tuesday.

The United States held out the promise of further economic and military aid if Abadi formed an “inclusive” government quickly.

The humanitarian disaster in the Sinjar Mountains in northern Iraq continued to claim lives, with 20,000-30,000 people who fled the advance of Isis fighters still trapped on the mountain. Read more here.

The Pentagon is considering sending additional “military advisers” to Iraq, a senior defense official said. The US is flying up to 100 sorties a day in Iraq and using drones to hit Isis positions.

The European Union agreed that individual members could send arms to Iraqi Kurds, in coordination with Baghdad.

Two car bombs killed 12 people in different parts of the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Tuesday, police sources said.

More than 1.2m displaced in Iraq, UN says

As many as 35,000 people have fled Sinjar Mountain through Syria to return to Iraqi Kurdistan and seek shelter in the Dohuk governorate, UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards said at a press briefing in Geneva Tuesday. Edwards said in a statement:

People are moving to places including Zakho and Dohuk town where 16 school buildings have been made available. Food, water and medical care are being provided. As of now, an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people remain trapped on Sinjar Mountain without food, water or shelter. Access to these families is extremely limited.

Dohuk governorate is now hosting close to 400,000 displaced Iraqis, including Yazidis, Christians, Shabak, Kakai, Armenian and Turkmen minorities – some of whom have endured repeated displacement. [...]

In all, there are more than 1.2 million internally displaced people in Iraq, including an estimated 700,000 in the Kurdistan region which already hosts some 220,000 Syrian refugees.

EU agrees members can arm Kurds

The European Union failed on Tuesday to agree on a joint position on supplying weapons to Iraqi Kurds battling Islamic State militants, but said individual members could send arms in coordination with Baghdad, Reuters reports:

EU ambassadors, holding an extraordinary meeting to discuss the crises in Iraq, Ukraine and Gaza, gave the green light for individual governments to send arms under set conditions.

“The (ambassadors) noted the urgent request by the Kurdish regional authorities to certain member states for military support and underlined the need to consider this request in close coordination with the Iraqi authorities,” a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said.

The Guardian’s Mona Mahmood (@monamood) has spoken by phone with Khaoula Hassan, a mother of 10 who fled with her family into the Sinjar Mountains nine days ago, to escape Islamic State fighters.

“I do not want anything for myself but need urgent help for my ten kids especially a two month infant who is dying slowly in my hands,” Hassan tells Mona:

I forgot entirely to grab her infant formula while we were fleeing our home, in fear of the fighters. Our main concern was to protect our kids, nothing else. All that we brought with us to the mountain was a few blankets. The mountain is hot during the day and cold at night.

We have been on the mountain for nine days now. Even my breast is getting dry to feed my little baby. I’m frantically worried about her safety, watching her heath waning rapidly within the last two days. She is losing weight for the shortage of food and dehydration. There is no medical assistance on the mountain at all. I’m so terrified about her, though I have to say that there are tens of infants who are dying on the mountain for the same reasons every day. [...]

Hassan said she saw a US plane near the mountain Tuesday and her husband ran to get some food. “He brought some juice, biscuit, tomato, cucumber and wheat,” Hassan said:

We found a tanker of rain water on the mountain that is used by the shepherds to water the sheep and trees. We relied on all the time for drinking and making bread. The only way to escape the hardship of the mountain is to walk for an entire day down the mountain till you get to a peshemrga checkpoint that would move you by cars to Syrian borders and then to Dahouk or Zakhou provinces in Kurdistan.

My sisters and brothers were able to get to Kurdistran that way, but I could not with my kids. We are dying slowly here.

The helicopter that crashed delivering aid in the Sinjar Mountains, killing the pilot, Major General Majid Ashour, ended up on its side. Click through to see a photograph of the wreckage by photographer Moises Saman (and see more of his arresting images of Iraq on the New Yorker web site).

Dan Stewart (@thatdanstewart)

First photo from the Iraqi helicopter crash, taken by TIME photographer who survived it http://t.co/LPmYNd0THG

Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has declined to rule out military involvement in northern Iraq, saying he was not prepared to stand aside in the face of a potential genocide, the Guardian’s Josh Halliday (@joshhalliday) reports:

Speaking after a day of high-level intelligence briefings with British officials in London, Abbott described the unfolding atrocity in northern Iraq as a “humanitarian catastrophe” and said Australia would provide humanitarian aid to Yazidi refugees besieged by Islamic State (Isis) forces on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq.

Abbott said: “As President Obama has said, it is a potential genocide and no one wants to stand aside in the face of a potential genocide.”

Asked in a press conference in central London whether he would rule out Australian military involvement in the deepening crisis, the Liberal leader said: “We certainly don’t rule that out.

Britain has a moral and historical obligation to arm the Kurds against the Islamic State jihadists now menacing Irbil, and failure to so would be certain to amplify the terror threat at home, the Kurdish security chief, Masrour Barazani, told the Guardian’s Martin Chulov (@martinchulov) on Tuesday. Martin reports in Irbil:

In an interview with the Guardian, Barazani, chancellor of the Kurdistan region security council, has implored the British public not to allow fatigue from more than 10 years of war to stop support for the Kurds in what is fast shaping up to be the biggest threat to Iraqi Kurdish society since the collapse of the Ottoman empire almost 100 years ago.

He said: “In terms of drawing the lines [the regional borders], the UK had the greatest role in the creation of the modern Middle East. Now is not the time to say it is not our problem. I would like Britain to remember that we are not Helmand, or Basra, we are your friends.”

Mentioning the British-French agreement that enshrined the modern states of Lebanon and Syria, and led to the creation of Iraq’s borders, he added: “For how long do the Kurds have to pay the price of the mistakes that were made? We are victims of Sykes Picot. For how long do we have to be held hostage, or to be vulnerable?

Islamic State fighters have caused Kurdish officials to question whether the reputation of some peshmerga units is built on past glories rather than current capabilities, the Guardian’s Martin Chulov (@martinchulov) writes in Irbil:

To the Kurds of Iraq’s north, the sight of their vaunted peshmerga troops in full retreat nine days ago was difficult to reconcile.

For decades the peshmerga had been the force they could depend on to keep their territory safe and keep alive their dreams of autonomy.

But in one humiliating weekend, the Kurdish forces were chased back to Irbil by an enemy that has now turned its attention and guns on everything the Kurds have built during decades of war with Saddam Hussein, then the US-led invasion, and eight years of enmity with Iraq’s central government, when many in the north turned inwards and quietly got rich.

Video: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Iraq: ‘poison of hatred and brutality must be stopped’

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon urges the international community to do more to help the Yazidi minority in Iraq, as the ‘poison of hatred and brutality’ continues to spread. He says the plight of the Yazidi people, of which thousands are still trapped in the Sinjar mountains, is harrowing with accounts of executions, child abductions and exploitation at the hands of Isis militants